


[minus the speed can you imagine the phobia]

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: [to see you there] [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fallout, Friendship, Gen, Pepper is kind of not okay, Post-Iron Man 3, acute traumatic stress disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5936938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Pepper, coming home to the Tower after the mess with the Mandarin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The day that Natasha brought Betty to the Tower, Bruce kind of genuinely wanted to throttle her. For a few split seconds, at least, he'd been that thrown, that panicked and honest-to-god _that angry_. Which she knew. 

Of course she knew. You can't actually _have_ an emotion around Natasha Romanoff that she doesn't at least pick up _some_ sign of. Sometimes it strikes him that it must be kind of exhausting. 

These days that has transmuted into the entirely play-acting desire to threaten to throttle her while shouting _do you ever get tired of being right about people all the time?_ Because it's a habit of hers that's _annoying_. 

On the other hand he often thinks he brought it on himself by scaring the crap out of her, first deliberately and then not so much. Of course that'd make her want to be able to predict him, right down to a fraction of a hair. He think he gets her enough to be sure of that. 

That doesn't make it less annoying when she's right all the time, though. 

But he still doesn't like to imagine where he'd be, in his head, if Betty were still in Virginia not knowing if he was alive or dead. If it was just him and Tony, and things to build and Tony's big ideas and castles in the air, and nothing solid to hold onto. Or even really to think through. If life were just that, Bruce knows he'd still be the . . . well, the drifting ghost person, shadow man he'd been when Natasha approached him in Mumbai, without any idea of a real life or real place in the world, no need to figure out the shit in his head or think about the consequences of what he did or didn't do. 

Bruce doesn't actually think Tony'd be good for him, if he were still in that mental place. Could talk him into way too many of the wrong things, if none of it felt real. 

Not that Tony'd be trying, but that's the thing about Tony Stark. It's the reason things _happen_ to him. Things like, _just for instance_ , getting his Malibu house blown up and then crash-landing somewhere in Fuck-Knows-Where and - according to JARVIS - having to use some kid's garage to baby his suit and previously-mentioned AI back to some kind of useful life while he attacks the most dangerous terrorist currently on earth with bombs hand-made from Christmas decorations. 

With most people this would be implausible, even incredible. With Tony, you just end up going . . . of course that happened. It's Tony. 

If that were the only thing Bruce had in his life . . . 

The thing is, he could see that going bad. Tony's not an anchor, Tony is the _opposite_ of an anchor, and it's not that there's anything inherently wrong with that but Bruce is honest enough with himself now to know that he needs an anchor. 

And it's funny. Because the reason Betty's an anchor sometimes isn't even because she's being particularly grounded at the moment. Sometimes it's quite the opposite. It's just that when it is, he automatically keeps his feet on the floor, so he can metaphorically grab her ankle and keep her from floating out the window. 

It's a bit of a tortured metaphor, and he ends up thinking about Mary Poppins, but it works. Tony's not like that. Not by himself. 

So overall, Bruce has to grant that Natasha was right. However annoying that might be. Because her being right means Betty's _here_ and Bruce sometimes thinks it's really not just him that's better for it. That the ripples extend further than that. 

And there is, and always will be, something deeply satisfying about being able to do what they do when JARVIS announces that Tony and Pepper's helicopter just touched down on the landing pad upstairs, which is glance at each other and have a whole conversation in the looks they exchange, without needing to say a word. 

The first part of it, anyway. The part that goes _well the chances of Tony_ not _wanting to leap right into trying to figure this Extremis shit out are about zero, do we wait and see if he actually asks or do we just take it for granted and meet him in I-Complex?_

Betty chews on her lower lip until Bruce pointedly _looks_ at what she's doing and she rolls her eyes and stops before she gives herself another bloody lip. "You should go up," she says, and explains it before Bruce asks, "because if I go up right _now_ he's just going to be determined to put on a show of being completely at ease and on top of everything. If it's just you there can be manly bonding over being guilty this happened to Pepper and worrying about whether or not he can fix it." 

She catches Bruce's Look at that, and protests, "I am being nice! I'm not even being derisive! I am just acknowledging that it's a factor!" 

"As an adjective, from you," Bruce informs her, "'manly' is derisive by default." 

"Okay, fine," she admits, "what should it be then, 'masculine'? Because you know that's a huge part of it, the whole - " she makes a sort of tumbling, pulling-down gesture with both hands, "guy _real men protect the women they love_ self-worth Thing." She pushes her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. "It's not a bad thing necessarily but it _is_ a _thing_ , and I am not someone he can take sympathy about it from." 

"How about 'guy'," Bruce says, pretending he's not suppressing a smile. "Let's just go with 'guy', here."

"Fine," she says, "you can go do guy-bonding over it, and he _might_ even agree to go to bed before he falls over." 

"Wow, you're optimistic tonight," Bruce tells her and she wrinkles her nose. 

"It's _guaranteed_ not to happen if I go up right now," she retorts, and Bruce has to grant her that. 

"You're probably right. Also frankly - " The thought occurs to him just fractions of a second before he's saying the words, "Frankly, Pepper could probably use some company that isn't Tony. Maybe even isn't male, period." 

"Mmm," Betty says, nodding. "But I'm going to let her ask. She's had enough of people doing things without asking. And if she wants to hole up in a bath or something and then go to bed, that's fine too. So I'll stay here," she says, sliding back into her office chair, "and you can go Tony-sit." 

Bruce waggles a finger at her. " _That's_ not nice," he says, and she rolls her eyes. 

"I wasn't the one who was digging through Hindi insults for new things to call him," she retorts, sweetly, and Bruce decides this is probably not a bout he can win, and chooses retreat instead. 

 

Bruce had been _furious_ when everything that was happening hit the news. He'd been even more furious when Pepper'd fallen off the face of the earth, and he found out Rhodes wasn't even in the country. So he really had dug up every nasty name he could think of and vented by throwing all of them at Tony from a distance. 

Betty'd done what she always does when something horrible's happening, which is to figure out what she can and can't control, can and can't do anything about, and proceed to do what she can and refuse to talk about or think about what she can't. She'd gotten sharp exactly once, when Bruce'd been working himself up to start tossing veiled threats at whoever could get a call _through_ to Rhodes, wherever he was, doing whatever he was doing. She'd said, _Tony's either dead on the sea-floor or hiding somewhere and unless and until he breaks silence we won't know, and Rhodes will be of absolutely no use. So stop it._

Her voice had had the snap of being close to her edge, and Bruce'd hauled himself back in. 

It was all the anger of being afraid for someone and helpless to do anything, anyway. And the hours of not being able to do anything kept stretching until suddenly every system in the Tower lit up with the signs that JARVIS was actually in the building, inhabiting its servers and networks, almost like a lightning strike. JARVIS had dumped a terse text summary of everything that'd been going on in Betty's email, apologized with a politeness that was almost hysterically funny at the time for the part where she and Bruce'd been so out of the loop, hired an excavation company to get to the Malibu wreckage _as fast as possible_ (no, faster than that) and start digging, and then finally dumped the incomplete salvage of Maya Hansen's work into Bruce and Betty's work-profiles and asked if they could start working on how to make the Extremis infection safe, because currently people infected with it had a frightening habit of erratic, violent behaviour and also of occasionally exploding, and Aldritch had infected Pepper with it to try to force Tony to cooperate. 

JARVIS had also apologized to Bruce that, while there was likely to be a climactic and explosive fight at the end of this, timing was such that attempting to go from New York to California was a waste of effort. Bruce'd figured that was just irony for you: the one time so far he, personally, just him, _wanted_ to unleash the Other Guy for something, and it's logistically unfeasible. 

Then he'd thrown himself at the Extremis data with Betty. And they'd rapidly put it right up there with the gamma research on the shelf of "this should never have fucking well gone to human trials, Christ on a crutch." 

At one point Betty'd had to sit with her face in her hands for a full minute before she could go back to taking it apart. 

But it all means that Bruce really isn't angry anymore. It's all faded to a kind of exasperated affectionate desire to, at most, smack Tony upside the head for being a stubborn idiot. Which you can only do so hard no matter how much of an idiot he's been, Bruce knows, because more than once Tony's life and even the future of the planet has more or less _depended_ on Anthony Edward Stark being the biggest stubborn idiot in the whole damn world. 

Besides. Pepper being even slightly hurt or even a bit _near_ being endangered is, in some ways, a better smack than anything else could be. To smack as hard as the events of the last few days . . . well. Bruce'd definitely be giving him a serious concussion. 

 

I-Complex and its idiosyncratic layout are probably the perfect testament to how disorganized it is inside Tony Stark's brain, even on a good day. Bruce doesn't mind working in here, but he does tend to have a problem getting started, so instead he makes himself some coffee while he waits. 

The nice thing about not drinking coffee on a regular basis is that even when your system is weirdly hyped up on a combination of gamma radiation and primer serum, the caffeine in it _works_. And given it's the middle of what sensible people would call the night, he's probably going to need it even to keep up with Tony to the point where he falls over, flat on his face. 

Though Bruce might catch him. Depending. An apology would make it more likely. 

He hasn't spoken to Tony in a few months. Actually, that's not the right way around: really it's Tony who hasn't spoken to _him_ in a few months, since throwing a full-on tantrum over Bruce telling him that Tony's very own case of PTSD and associated paranoia were getting out of hand - way, way out of hand - and the part where he seemed to be trying to build a suit to respond to any and every possible permutation of threat that his brain could come up out of its sleep-deprived clusterfuck of a prolonged panic attack _was a very bad thing_. 

It wasn't a nice conversation. It wasn't a conversation he'd wanted to have. But Tony'd been willfully ignoring hints and eventually Bruce had to hit the subject head on, even if it was just so he'd know he tried. 

"Drones, Tony," is what he'd resorted to saying, in an attempt to maybe shock through Tony's defensiveness. "You're not building suits anymore you're building man-shaped _drones_ and you're turning JARVIS into a - " . . . which is where Tony'd lost his temper, reached into his deep store of nasty off-the-cuff responses, and more or less stormed out the door to Malibu. 

Bruce'd been pissed off for about a week, and then he'd more or less sighed and let it go: Tony was a mess, is a mess, and Bruce'd been hitting some pretty touchy buttons pretty hard in an attempt to maybe get him to see reason _before_ everything blew up, for once, instead of after, but . . . it's not like he hasn't been there himself, and he really _is_ more stable than Tony, even as a fucking mess. 

Betty hadn't asked, and Bruce feels a little bit uneasy about not telling her. If she'd asked, he would have. But he just left it, because bar Tony sticking to his silent treatment there hadn't been any sign of his obsession getting out where it could start doing damage yet, and by the time Tony was threatening international terrorists on major news networks, it seemed like it'd be a bit late and not totally important. 

What Tony needs is about twelve years of therapy, and probably some ADHD medication. Bruce's thought that more than once. But it's never going to happen, because by the time Tony trusts anyone enough to stop with the defenses that person's way past the boundary between patient and therapist, and he's just never going to talk to anyone he doesn't trust like that. At all. 

The medication might happen, with a miracle, but Bruce isn't sure Tony'd stay on it. Most of the ways Tony's managed to turn his obvious (obvious to Bruce, anyway) disorder into an advantage come with some really unhealthy and outright pathological side effects, like destroying his personal life, but he's been doing it for more than twenty years. Change'd be hard to sell. 

The one prayer Bruce's ever thought made any kind of sense is the one that asks for the patience to deal with the things you can't change, the courage to change the things you can and - most importantly - the wisdom to tell the difference. If you could get that balance exactly right, you'd probably be set. 

Bruce's finished making himself a cappuccino by the time Tony walks in the door. And Tony stops dead and stares at Bruce, blinking. It's the kind of blink that makes it clear that not only has the train of thought derailed, but also gone crashing down alongside the trestle into the gorge and might be exploding as you watch. 

"Oh," Tony says, abstractedly. "You are . . . already here. So I don't need to ask JARVIS to wake you up." 

It's clear to Bruce that the words are coming out on autopilot. That Tony is _literally_ just vocalizing as he thinks. That tends to mean Tony should have been in bed _hours_ ago, so this might be fun. For a very special, very specific definition of the word "fun". 

He waits, patiently, for Tony to reassemble the thought railroad, find a new engine, and make it go. He watches as Tony's expression goes from blank deer in headlights and made of wide eyes, to sudden furious thought, and then as it slides into the face that says, _I'm about to say things I don't want to say, awkwardly and gracelessly, in order to get them over with, and I will spend this time kind of reminding everyone of a nervous dog from a shelter, ready to bolt for the door._

With a final garnish of the hesitation that means _I don't know how to start._

Overall, Bruce thinks, looking him over, Tony looks terrible. But he also looks like he could look worse. He's wearing a plain black t-shirt with his arc-reactor glowing through, and there are a lot of truly spectacular bruises on his arms and, from what Bruce can see, probably going over his shoulders. Which means his back and hips are also covered. There's a few bruises on his face and some serious abrasion and he _looks_ like he hasn't slept for a week. 

And underneath some of the truly spectacular bruises are the yellowing signs of older ones. Probably from when the mansion got bombed. 

"Break anything?" Bruce asks, when the silence lasts a bit longer than is comfortable and it gets clear that Tony's thought train stalled out at the gate. 

"Several suits and most of an oil-tanker," Tony answers. It's reflexive, automatic and light. "Nothing, you know, attached. Oh and the subcutaneous implants work." There's a trace of smugness in his voice about that. 

And then, all at once, like his body remembers how it works, he steps further into the room, comes towards Bruce and stops about two arms' lengths away. He puts the palms of his hands together and holds them in front of himself, frowning and watching Bruce warily. 

Tony's actually pretty good at people, when he wants to be, and when he's willing to lie. It's when he's honest that it starts being a problem. When he's honest, Tony Stark can be amazingly bad at people. 

Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say _when he's vulnerable_. Bruce thinks that might be it. 

"Okay first off," Tony says, in a carefully measured voice, like he's inching across a verbal tight-rope, "I do think it's fair to point out that if I _didn't_ make forty-two suits - " 

And Bruce can't stop himself, he _has_ to cover his face with his free hand, because Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, Tony.

" - then everyone on that tanker would have ended up seriously dead including me and Rhodey and Pepper. Also the president. _But_ \- " he goes on, holding his hands up out in front of him now, like he's trying to preemptively stop Bruce from interrupting him, "I will also concede that maybe if I weren't being . . . erratic, then it might not've turned out to need them. The whole, um, exploding mansion helicopter bombing thing might not have happened, so we might've been able to sort things out a bit less . . . chaotically, and by we I mean, like, involving people whose jobs - look _anyway_ the point is I will concede it might've been less messy." 

Bruce raises his eyebrows, but lets Tony go on. And he goes on with, "And. Um." He clears his throat. "More importantly, ah, yes, so - " 

Tony stops, takes a deep breath, sighs, and says, "Okay so yes, I was getting . . . pathologically eaten by paranoia, yes it is probably, okay definitely, fucking PTSD _yes_ it is a problem and I need to deal with it and no I realize it's not . . .gone just because I feel okay-ish right now, _yes_ the suit proliferation was . . . bad, they're all gone now anyway, and basically yes, you were right, and I was wrong, and - I'm sorry." 

He says it looking over Bruce's shoulder instead of at him. Over his shoulder, at the ceiling, over to the side, basically anywhere but Bruce. His hands close, and then open again, and he gives Bruce the "where is the door and how fast can I get there" expression that's for waiting for someone to respond, and adds, "And yes that was fucking awkward but please don't make me say that again." 

Actually as far as Tony Stark apologies go it's pretty damn good, and Bruce wasn't going to give him any grief about it. It actually had the words _I'm sorry_ and _I was wrong_ in it, without qualifiers, and mentioned what he was wrong _about_ , so all in all, Bruce is impressed and a little gratified. 

"You don't need to say it again," Bruce tells him, immediately, and watches Tony relax. "Thanks," he adds. Tony gives a little ghost of a quirk of a smile and a shrug, and is still clearly so uncomfortable about it all that Bruce lets it go. He really does look awful. 

In fact - "You look terrible," Bruce says, bluntly. "When did you last - " 

"Look," Tony says, dropping the rest of the tension and sliding right back into being Tony, which includes assuming he knows what someone's going to say when he doesn't, "I do not have time to take a nap right now, I dozed on the helicopter, I'm fucking _fine_ \- " 

" - _eat_ ," Bruce says, raising his voice over Tony's, and Tony stops again. 

"Oh," he says. And then frowns. "Uh - " 

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Bruce replies. "JARVIS, can you. . . make pizza happen?" 

"Of course, sir," says JARVIS and Bruce thinks maybe just possibly he hears a hint of satisfaction in the digital voice. Bruce isn't sure whether that means there's going to be delivery or someone from the cooking staff's going to get overtime or _what_ , but that's why he'd said _make pizza happen_ because frankly right now he's not even sure what's a good idea and what isn't. Except that if Tony's not going to get any rest, he's at least going to consume some damn calories. 

"Betty's finishing up some stuff in her office," Bruce goes on out loud, "so if you pull up what we've done so far you can have a look at that while we wait for food." 

"Wait, what - what you've done so far?" Tony asks, turning back towards Bruce, waving one hand and looking startled. "How were you working on anything so far? How did you - you knew there were things to work on?" 

"JARVIS gave us the Extremis specs he could pull from Hansen's system from here," Bruce replies, blandly, "and your scribbled thing on the card. That was earlier today," he adds. "While you were still arguing with the military and getting shouted at by Nick Fury." 

"Nick Fury does not actually shout," Tony notes, caught by the tangent for a second. "At me, anyway, because that would mean I won. And Nick Fury can't actually stand to admit I won. Or win. Or anything. Right. And, uh. Thanks, JARVIS," he adds, looking up. 

"Of course, sir," says JARVIS and this time Bruce is pretty sure he hears "smug" in there. Can an AI feel something like smugness? 

"Great," Tony says next, clapping his hands together and acting like he's still got energy even when he obviously doesn't. "I guess, then, let's . . . look at stuff." He taps a code on the nearest work surface, and the whole room sprouts holograms. 

Privately, Bruce gives it a couple hours: at that point Tony's going to run into the same thing that Bruce and Betty have already, which is not being able to go forward without a bunch of tests of the kind that require _more_ than three people and more than a couple hours to do, and Bruce is not going to let him drag more of the R &D staff back here until at least tomorrow. 

So, a couple hours.


	2. Chapter 2

As the door out to the landing pad closes, Pepper feels the Tower close around her like a personal suit of armour, and she fights not to burst into tears. 

It's a struggle. It's a big damn struggle. But if she bursts into tears (again) Tony's going to fuss and worry (again) and hover and apologize (again) and right now she doesn't want that. Doesn't know what in the name of any available god she _does_ want, but doesn't want that. Can't _take_ that. And also can't take the thought of losing what shreds are left of her composure and temper and taking it out on Tony. That's what would happen. 

She couldn't deal with that, if it did. 

Tony has that bright-eyed look that comes with being tired, overstimulated, and determined to just keep going and _work_. It's the look that usually comes with an ugly piled up crash at the end because despite what Tony may believe he is still human and still needs to do sensible human things. Part of Pepper thinks she should be sending him to bed. Or at least trying. Everybody'd be better off, probably, if she sent him to bed. 

Except first of all that thought's way, way up above her, on a mental shelf that's almost out of reach and she can't even muster up the energy to _look_ for it. And second of all actually she'd kind of like him to go away and lock himself in a lab for a while trying to solve every problem in the world with his most reliable tool, also known as: his brain. That sounds really good to her right now. He can go make himself feel better. Maybe apologize to Bruce on the way for whatever the hell they'd been fighting about when Tony picked up and moved base back to the house in Malibu. 

That would actually be great. He should do that. Go spend some of the brightness until he falls over. Maybe, maybe by the time he's ready to fall over, _she'll_ have clawed enough of her head back together that she can do something other than feel like she's bouncing back and forth between hysterical tears and hysterical laughter. 

She can't deal with this feeling. She doesn't _want_ this feeling, this feeling is not _her_ , this _person_ is not who she wants to _be_ and she needs to make it stop. She tries not to think about how maybe she won't be able to. She can't think about that either. 

So when it comes up less than two minutes in the door, when Tony hesitantly bounces the idea of him going to just start a few things in I-Complex "while he's fresh" (which is the biggest lie he's ever told her and he's told her a few), what Pepper says is _good idea, I'm fine, yes, I'm sure I'm fine, yes, I'm just going to have a shower and go to bed, don't stay up too late_ \- knowing that last bit is completely pointless. 

Tony kisses her once on the mouth and once on the cheek and then she watches the elevator doors close. You can't hear the elevators in the Tower, but Pepper knows their timing by heart. She can watch it descend in her mind's eye, and know exactly when it falls below the residential floors. 

There's no reason for that to matter. It's not like he can't turn around and come back up if he's worried. But she feels like it matters anyway. Like he's committed to going to I-Complex, somehow. 

Pepper stands in the penthouse living room and closes her eyes. Her left arm's wrapped around her ribs, and her right hand's touching her throat, and it is just about the most defensive posture she can get into when she's standing up. She can _feel_ her shoulders up around her _ears_. She's wearing a mismatch of clothes, pieces acquired from soldiers and first responders who showed up first and were nice enough to find them for her. She'd said she was cold. She wasn't cold. She's not sure her body knows how to be cold right now. That it can do anything but perfect - what the hell is it called again? Homeostasis. Or, you know, Volcano Woman. 

But she'd really, really wanted more on than the fucking lycra. 

And now she's here. It's one variation on _home_. And it's the one that would probably still be here if an entire space-army decided to bomb it, and nobody gets into unless JARVIS lets them. And the one where JARVIS also controls an _extensive_ sprinkler system throughout the entire building, and that's actually the thought that finally lets her drop her arms: even if she _does_ suddenly turn into Volcano Bitch from Hell again, she won't be burning anything down. 

She can't destroy anything important here by accident. 

When she says, "JARVIS?" out loud, it's because she wants to _hear_ him. She wants to hear the immediate, calm, attentive reply of _Yes, Ms Potts?_ that has been a mainstay of, god, how many years of her life now? It helps. If JARVIS is answering like that, everything's probably okay. She just wants to hear it. 

But she comes up with the question, "Do I have clean sweats here?" to sort of stand in as an excuse. It's a stupid question. Even if she didn't have any of her own, she _could_ have a brand new pair in less than an hour and she sure as _hell_ intends to stay in the shower that long, at least. 

"Indeed, Ms Potts," is JARVIS' only reply. Like maybe he knows. 

Lately she has seriously started to wonder how much JARVIS really does know. On his own. All by himself. 

"Good," Pepper says. Her voice cracks a little; she clears her throat. "Thank you." 

 

She stays in the shower for a hundred and forty seven minutes. 

Some of those minutes, maybe a lot of those minutes but definitely some of those minutes, she spends having the hysterics she's been holding off since she realized she'd just killed someone. Killed someone _directly_. With more or less her own hands. 

Technically she'd killed someone before, technically she killed Obadiah: she punched the button, she let all the power loose, the power that fried him alive and left him dead - her actions were the proximate cause of his death. But somehow that's always seemed distant and intellectual and abstract - and this time wasn't. Isn't. 

This was hands and body and fury and hate and wanting nothing, _nothing_ more than to hit that _son of a bitch_ , hit him with everything she could possibly hit him with until he was dead, until he was a smear on the floor, until he was _gone_. To see him, _feel_ him die, to _fucking destroy him._ God she wanted that, she'd wanted it so much _it_ was what lit her up, made her burn. 

She's never, ever felt like that before. 

She's never wanted to feel that way. _Never_. 

Thinking about it now makes her feel sick. 

She sits on the floor of the shower, water running, knees bent close to her chest and her fingers tangled in her own wet hair. Even when she stops crying she hyperventilates for a while; even when she stops doing that, she stares at the water running down to the drain in the middle of the beautiful tiled floor while her mind replays all those seconds of _furious_ violence behind her eyes, and her body replays the feeling of the _fucking_ restraints. 

And pain. 

And the hideous, hideous fucking feeling that _something_ 's happening to her, to her body, in her body, that she doesn't want and never fucking agreed to and can't stop. Nauseous, twisting, _horrible_ fucking feeling. She lets go of her hair and wraps her arms around her knees. Her fingernails dig into her skin like they can make the memory of the feeling go away. They can't. She wishes they could. 

She can't feel it now and that makes it worse. Because fucking Extremis is _finished_ remaking her, rewriting her whole fucking body down to little tiny god-damned cells and now she _can't feel it anymore_ but she's still a walking time-bomb and it still _changed her_ against her fucking will and it's not fair that she can't even feel the difference anymore. And it doesn't even matter if Tony _can_ fix it, make everything okay, because it won't be okay _anyway_ because it won't change what happened in the first place. It won't change _that_ it happened in the first place. That it's _in her_. That's done. That won't ever go away. 

In the middle of those thoughts, another one knifes in and Pepper remembers that Maya Hansen is dead. She can't even figure out how to start thinking about how she feels about that. 

Once upon a time, in her life, she'd've sat in the shower like this until the hot water ran out. Now she lives in a modern-day castle, and her hot water doesn't run out. Ever. 

So instead she stays until lying down on the shower floor seems more attractive than sitting, and then she turns the water off and gets out. 

 

Pepper puts on loose-legged sweat-pants and a tank top. She dries her hair, first with a towel, then with the hair-dryer, yanking a brush through the tangles wet and dry exactly like her hairstylist forbids her to do. 

Then she sits on the edge of one of the sleek arm-chairs that are over in the sitting-library-lounging area of the open plan that currently makes up the bedroom-and-surround, and stares at the wall, and tries to think what the hell to do next. 

She can't sleep yet. She's too wound up. She should sleep, but _nothing_ rattling around inside her skull is restful right now and if she lies down and closes her eyes it'll just get worse. TV is out. So, so out: the explosion, the Presidential Kidnapping, the rescue, the Mandarin, the suits detonating, _she_ is all over the news and everything that makes glancing contact with the news and she Just Can't. And she can't watch fiction either, because once again her life has veered right into the lane that _should_ be reserved for TV shows and stupid movies, and then crashed there. Left her there.

But there's nothing else she can think of where there'd even be a point: none of it's engrossing enough to actually distract her. It'll just make her embarrassed about the pathetic efforts to find distraction. 

But she still can't sleep yet. 

She realizes her hands are twisted in her hair again. 

For about ten minutes, she holds out. She gets up, finds magazines, throws the magazine on the floor; she finds the novel she'd been reading, realizes how much of it is about some asshole pining for a woman who has _clearly_ got something else going on in her life that's good for her, and throws it at the wall; she stares at her own tablet and the endless array of games that are either too mindless or not mindless enough, and then drops it on the bed. 

Pepper puts her face in her hands. Pulls her hands down to sit palm to palm just under her chin, in front of her throat. Gives up. 

She says, "JARVIS?" 

"Ms Potts?" JARVIS's reply is immediate. Again, it's comforting in and of itself. Even after she'd heard Tony's voice coming out of his stupid helmet, she'd spent some time at least trying not to worry about what might have happened to JARVIS, with the whole house destroyed. Had realized she didn't really understand how JARVIS _worked_. What could threaten him, or damage him, and what couldn't. 

Pepper takes a breath, and then hesitates. And then makes herself stop hesitating and asks, "Is Betty Ross in the building? And, um, awake?" 

Because it's quarter to one in the morning and most people would be asleep. _Should_ be asleep. But JARVIS replies, "Dr Ross is currently in her office." Then he adds, "Dr Banner and Mr Stark are currently in I-Complex. Would you like to speak to Dr Ross?" 

Pepper exhales her deep breath in a huff, and says, "No. Could you just . . . ask if she wants to come up here?" 

Because while the idea of going down momentarily flashes across Pepper's mind, it's followed by something very basic and animal _screaming_ that she should never leave this incredibly well-protected penthouse again, and she doesn't have the energy to fight it. 

She thinks, _oh fuck I hope it's just tonight. I hope I'm not going to develop agoraphobia. I can't deal with developing agoraphobia._ She can add it to the long, long list of things she can't deal with. Including leaving the penthouse. 

"Certainly, Ms Potts," JARVIS says, agreeably. 

By the time she crosses to the kitchen-dining-sitting-area, JARVIS adds, "Dr Ross is on her way," and Pepper also finds out that there's chocolate cheesecake in the fridge, and it's from earlier today. She looks up. JARVIS isn't actually "up", not really, he's not actually above her, but it's habit, at least sometimes. Sometimes she feels like she has to locate him somewhere. "JARVIS," she says, "did you get this?" and she points at the cake. 

"Mr Harker suggested that comfort food might be in order," JARVIS replies, and Pepper almost starts crying again. Her PA would think of that, if only because he _hates_ not having something to do, something he can do. So at least he could make sure there was a gourmet chocolate cheesecake in the fridge. It's hard to encompass that, with everything else. She blinks rapidly to clear her eyes, pulls the cake out of the fridge and finds some damn plates. 

When the chime for the elevator makes its quiet noise over by the living-room, Pepper's dug out the Tentoura Castro and measured one shot into steamed milk for Betty, and two into steamed milk for her. She does have a couple seconds of thought about whether she should be drinking, but then she decides she doesn't fucking care. 

Betty's wearing a soft, chunky grey tunic-length sweater, black leggings, her hair in a pony-tail, her glasses, and a kind of soft, rueful expression that says she's got a pretty good idea how awful Pepper feels, why Pepper's asking for _someone_ (someone who is not Tony and is not Bruce) to come up and sit with her. All together, that's enough that Pepper _does_ start crying again and has to put the bottle down before she spills it. 

Betty pulls her down off the bar-stool she's been sitting on to make drinks and hugs her. It's the kind of hug that could go either way, brief and composed or long and tight. And right now, right now honestly Pepper feels bad enough that she wraps her arms around Betty's rib-cage and puts her head on Betty's shoulder and clings a bit like she's a teenager hugging an adult. 

She decides she's entitled. Or at least entitled to want it, and Betty's offering. Betty Ross isn't old enough to be her mother, but she _is_ old enough to have been her babysitter, and right now when it comes to clinging to someone and believing then when they say it'll be fine (someone who _isn't_ Tony who, love him though she does _and_ she does, she has seen be more of a human disaster than you would think possible, and _recently_ , someone who is basically the _opposite_ and always seems to have her shit together even when things are blowing up), Pepper thinks she'll take what she can get. 

And what she can get is pretty good, honestly. Betty hugs her back, and strokes her hair, until Pepper's mostly got a handle on the crying. Mostly. 

"Hey," Betty says, squeezing tight around Pepper's shoulders and then moving back just enough to look at her. She rests her hands on Pepper's shoulders instead. "It'll be fine. We've already been looking at it - Hansen's work _and_ Tony's obnoxious cryptic scribble. JARVIS passed them along while everything was still on its way to exploding." 

"Oh god," Pepper says, but Betty shakes her head. She squeezes Pepper's shoulders. 

"It gave us something to do. It gave Bruce something to do that wasn't stamping around swearing under his breath because travel-time meant there was basically no damn point in him even going to try to help. We'll figure it out. It's what we do - it's even pretty much within my actual field, even, unlike Tony's dabbling in everything. We will figure it out. "

And we will also," she adds, resting her hands on either side of Pepper's face for a minute, "find you a _really good therapist_ , because we do _not_ have to follow the _horrible_ example of the men in our lives." 

That makes Pepper laugh, weakly, wiping underneath her eyes with the heel of her hand. "I spent two hours under running water," she says, "thinking about how even if it all gets fixed tomorrow it won't _be fixed_ \- " 

"Brains are a pain in the ass," Betty says, frankly. "You can't just fix them, you have to baby them. But trust me. That can get better, too. We have tools. We know things. It'll be okay." 

Pepper clears her throat and picks up one of the cups full of steamed milk and cinnamon alcohol. "I made you something," she says, pretending to be serious, "to make up for having to come all the way up here." 

"Oh good," Betty says, taking it. "Because standing in elevators is absolutely exhausting." 

 

They sit in the den and eat half the cheesecake. And talk. Well. Pepper talks. 

Betty doesn't ask Pepper for the whole story - or at least the whole story as Pepper lived it - but Pepper finds herself telling it anyway. Doesn't even really realize she is until she's halfway through, and by then she kind of can't stop. Can't decide if she should stop, but knows she definitely cant. It's like it's spilling out, but at the same time like she's building a tower brick by brick in her head, shaking the bits and pieces of memory into line until she gets to the fucking tanker and the first explosion, and - 

"Then the whole thing collapsed," she says. She realizes she's staring at the floor by Betty's foot, tracing the rim of her cup over and over with one middle finger. "And I just remember falling and it _hurt_ and then nothing hurt anymore but I was _so fucking angry_. Like - " she makes herself look up, blinking and realizing her eyes are wet too, "like I have _never_ felt like that before. And I've been, I mean I _thought_ I'd been all kinds of angry but this was - " 

The fall, and the impact, and the metal hitting her. It's like they're etched into her body. She can feel the ghosts, right now. The fall and the impact and the metal and then the _fury_ , and everything falling around her. Falling away from her. _Melting_ away. No pain, no trap, no nothing, just _rage_ burning its way free. 

She shakes her head and looks away. "This," she says, "was something else. I just wanted to _destroy_ things. Him. Killian." 

"What did you do?" Betty asks, the first time she's interrupted or said anything other than the 'mmhm's and other noises that say she's listening. Pepper clears her throat and swallows around the lump. She takes a sip of her now-cooling alcoholic milk to follow it up. 

"I smashed him with a steel girder," she says. "Like a baseball bat. No. More like a cricket bat. No, maybe t-ball." 

Saying it like that sounds weird. Wrong. Like she's dropped a huge box on the floor and there's the crash, jarring and abrupt. And it sounds _ridiculous_. But it's true. 

That's what she'd done. She'd picked up a fucking steel birder and hit him with it as hard as she could - and that turned out to be hard enough to send him flying. 

Betty bites her lips like she's trying to keep hold of a burst of laughter. Pepper shakes herself and goes on, "Then when that didn't kill him I somehow got one of the gauntlets? From Tony's newest suit? And sort of blasted him apart with that. I think. He stopped reforming himself anyway. Then one of the autonomous suits attacked me because of course I was an Extremis heat signature - " 

She stops and says, "Oh god, Betty, what is my _life_?" 

"Clearly you dealt with the suit," Betty says, reaching over to pat her hand. It's not an answer. There isn't, Pepper knows, a good answer. 

Pepper nods. "And then suddenly I was . . . the anger was all gone? I was just . . .me, and I just beat someone to death with a steel girder and then blew them up and I feel like I have got to be fucking hallucinating, Betty, except I know I'm not and it's all real." 

Betty squeezes her hand. "That sounds fucking awful," she says, simply. Then she adds, leaning towards Pepper, "But Killian was asking for it, and deserved it, and you have _no reason at all_ to feel guilty." 

It's like a soap bubble popping in her head. Because that's what that is. Pepper feels like an idiot: guilt. Of course. Guilt. That's . . . something she's feeling. It's all mixed up in the rest of it, but it's there and maybe it's part of what throws her. _You killed someone_. It's terrifying, yes, that's another huge, huge part but also - _you killed someone_. 

Now she can see it. But - 

\- to hell with that. _Fuck_ that. She killed him. She killed Stane. She sent Justin Hammer to fucking prison. And all any of them had to have done to stay alive, stay free, was _not_ \- 

"How about freaked the fuck out," she says, shoving all of that away for now, half-joking - but only half, "because I turn into some kind of Burning Demon Bitch when I get really angry now?" 

"That is a totally reasonable thing to feel," Betty replies immediately. "But the guilt part isn't. Aldritch got what was coming to him, Pepper. And that's me the official Tower representative for something that might look like pacifism if you squint, saying that. He lit a firecracker and held on, and it took his hand off." 

"And the middle of his chest," Pepper says, a little bit light-headed. She's been light headed for a while, actually. But now she notices. 

But she gets what Betty means. 

"And now he's dead," Betty goes on, "and we're smarter than he is, and we will fix things. Also," she adds, gently, "you were kidnapped and experimented on and almost died so there's only so much better you're probably going to feel tonight, Pepper So you really shouldn't worry if you don't feel okay." 

Pepper swallows carefully around a new lump in her throat and says, "I don't. And I hate not being okay. I have devoted my _life_ to being okay - I lost my _shit_ at Tony after the Expo because everything was pushing me into being _not okay_." She takes a deep breath. "So I'm not okay with not being okay." 

That's really the thing. It is. She knows it. She's not okay with not being okay. But she doesn't have a choice, does she? Being freaked out about not being okay kind of just guarantees she'll stay not-okay longer. Which is stupid. She hates this. She takes another deep breath, and two, and tries to calm down. 

"I know," Betty says, with a kind of shrugging sympathy. "It sucks." She tilts her head. "Can you sleep?" 

"I don't know," Pepper admits. "I couldn't before, but I'm so tired - " 

Betty purses her lips just a little and then says, "I know you just had a shower, but you should go have a _bath_. Put aromatherapy stuff in it, I know you have some. It might be a placebo but who cares? Have more steamed milk and alcohol and soak in the bath with calm music on and count your breathing. Or maybe your heart-rate." 

Pepper chokes out a bit of a laugh. But then she nods. That sounds like it's probably a good idea. It's what she'd normally do, if she was stressed. 

"Then take an Ambien and go to bed," Betty finishes. "Maybe Ambien doesn't work anymore, maybe it does, but it's worth a try." 

It's probably true. Pepper catches Betty's hand and gives it a quick squeeze. "Thank you," she says. 

As soon as she says it, it seems stupid and thin, but it's suddenly hard to think of . . . what to say, how to say it. And it's what she _means_. And Betty seems to get it. 

God she's tired. 

 

Tony comes back up just after she crawls out of the bath. Betty's gone, gone to find _her_ bed, and Pepper wonders if she detoured to pick Bruce up and send Tony to up here. She might've. 

Pepper's not sure if the bath helped, or if she's just hit the end of her rope. If her battery's given up and finally gone dead. The thought makes her think of a plane and Tony asking her to run away and her saying _not everyone runs on batteries._ Who the fuck knows what she runs on now. 

But her mind's stopped running around in circles, and she pulls on satin pjs and pulls on her robe. Puts on slippers. Realizes she's covering herself up as much as she's trying to be warm. She hopes that need goes away, at least a little. 

Tony comes into the room, out of the living-room, just as she's starting to dry her hair again; she flicks the hairdryer off and turns to look at him. His face is scraped up, still, and the bruises are starting to show. He's a mess. Different mess than normal. 

He waves a hand and shakes his head. 

"Go ahead," he says, "I'm just gonna shower, I just realized I smell like - " he stops, looks down at himself and then says, "you know I don't even know what I smell like, but I don't like it. I'll be five minutes." 

He will be, too. And is. Tony never takes long in the shower, never has all the time she's known him, unless he's got someone else in there. She's just finished drying her hair as much as she's going to bother - who cares if it ends up in weird shapes from the bed - when he comes out in a tank top and pyjama bottoms, hair spiky-wet and eyes tired. 

Pepper puts the hair-dryer away. When she crosses over towards the bed, Tony reaches out one arm to her and then she's wrapped up in both of his, her head on his shoulder, Tony almost-rocking back and forth. He kisses the top of her head, moves his top hand to stroke her hair. As much as he can while still holding tight. In the end he just rests his hand on the back of her head. It's good. It feels good. 

Sometimes Tony seems so much like a whirlwind, so much like an insubstantial ghost, that she forgets how solid he really is. How even just the relative weight of the armour's kept him that way. That and his constant need to move. He smells like the amber in the soap he gets made just for him, and she can feel where human body gives way to glass and steel and who-knows-what, where it glows in the middle of his chest. 

When he speaks, Pepper can hear his voice through his bones and his skin, as much as through the air. And his voice is the serious one, the one he almost never manages, the one without any masks, when he says, "You're perfect. I love you. And we can handle this." 

"Okay," she says, quietly. 

Maybe she can believe that.


End file.
